Critical Point
by iamzuul
Summary: The Sand siblings return to Sunagakure and find that they cannot pick up the pieces of the lives they lived before. Betrayal, deception, and political conspiracies – this is the way of the Hidden Sand. Welcome home. [WiP]
1. One

Generic Disclaimer: Naruto not mine. Woe.

Everything else: Meant to take place in the time between chapters 238 and 245. Probably AU as hell, but since Kishimoto hasn't really told us what happened in that time, I have a lot to play around with. :3 I'll probably sneak in canon as it shows up.

There's more to this than the Sand's ultimate replacement of the Kazekage; it's about relationships, and life, and growing up. It's about pain and sacrifice, learning how to be selfless and when to be selfish. It's about finding yourself in adversity. It's the story of a ninja.

I hope you like it.

* * *

.oO0Oo.

CRITICAL POINT

Chapter One

.oO0Oo.

They had left Konohagakure five days ago, and Gaara had yet to fall asleep again.

She was going to miss all of this – the cool, dark shadows, the air that did not scorch the lungs to breathe, the endless supply of water. Temari was no fool, she knew that Sunagakure would always be her home, but she was also well aware that someday it would also be her death. People did not grow old in the deserts of the Wind Country; they withered up and dried out and blew away with the next harsh wind. It was, after all, why some of the best ninja in the world had come from Sunagakure – because the climate did not produce weak fools, like the ones in more water-abundant regions.

Or at least that's how it had been in the past. Or maybe she had been the fool, to believe the doctrines of her father and the other ninja of the Hidden Sand. Those boys from Konohagakure might not be great yet, but they had the potential for _immense_ greatness. And being raised in a country where water was taken for granted had nothing to do with it.

Temari stifled a sigh. Almost a year in the Fire Country had made her weak. She was going to _miss_ all this water…

Across the fire slept Kankurou, his form a flickering bundle of black in the darkness of night. His dolls were humped shapes resting against the trees further away. Also across the fire from her, but several feet away from his brother, sat Gaara, arms crossed over his chest and leaning back against his gourd. The light from the tiny fire lent his pale eyes an almost demonic glow as he gazed vacantly at nothing. Of the three of them, only Kankurou was asleep, but Temari had a feeling Gaara wasn't exactly awake, either.

She wished Baki was with them, although she understood why he had needed to return to Sunagakure. He was more than their guardian, more than their trainer, more than a ninja – he had weight on the Council, however small, and he felt his presence was needed desperately now that the Kazekage was dead. He was needed more in the Wind Country to keep their home from falling apart than he was needed with his students.

But Baki also had a way with Gaara, knew how to… not control him, exactly, but convince him to behave in a way that did not involve resorting to begging (as she and Kankurou usually had to). Baki knew what to say to Gaara and how to say it without getting killed – the only reason why he had lasted as their mentor for so long – and Temari desperately wished she had some of that skill now that Baki was gone.

Her little brother had been… strangely docile over the past three months. Quiet. And that docility made her wonder how long it would be before he snapped again. She knew that he hadn't really been recovered from his transformation into Shukaku when the Godaime sent them after the Sound-nin. She knew that recovering from physical stress was harder for him than normal people, even with his semi-demonic nature, considering how he couldn't exactly _sleep_ like normal people.

But it had been three months since he had killed Kimimaro (or Kimimaro had killed himself, depending on who you spoke with), three long months where he had spent most of his time laid out on a bed in an isolated wing of the hospital, while she and Kankurou watched him sleep and woke him if his chakra spiked. Three months and Gaara should have recovered.

Their going was not slow. Leisurely, but not slow – because a slow pace would have looked suspicious, and the siblings were still wary of attracting their brother's attention. It was an easy pace to keep up with. But Gaara had said next to nothing since they had left, not even his usual "Shut up or I'll kill you" when Kankurou started singing the raunchy songs he had learned while with the puppet troupe. He walked with his head down and his eyes half-closed, looking like nothing more than a sleepwalker. Which wasn't so far from the truth; Gaara was the only one she knew who could walk all day and even carry on a coherant conversation while half-asleep.

Three months of virtual bed-rest should have restored her youngest brother's stamina, but instead she was seeing all the signs of exhaustion. His eyes looked more bruised and puffy than they had been before the chuunin exam, and there was a glassy look to them that only disappeared when something commanded his full attention. He hadn't deliberately manipulated his sand in weeks. Kankurou had even commented briefly on how it seemed their brother was using more chakra than usual to supplement his stamina.

All of this disturbed her, because this was _not_ the Gaara she knew. A Gaara that was not quietly brooding or wildly homicidal was outside of her comfort zone. But a small part of her was also silently relieved, because if her brother _did_ drop from exhaustion, she knew that Shukaku could not take advantage of a body so completely drained of stamina. Chakra could only do so much, no matter how unlimited.

Temari couldn't help but feel bad for being relieved at Gaara's fatigue. She wondered what kind of person that made her.

The eyes of the boy seated across from her drooped a little more.

The blonde Sand-nin shifted her position, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs. She didn't care if the posture flashed anyone; Kankurou was asleep, after all, and Gaara didn't have the body shyness or the interest to care. And with their fire dwindling like it was, the night air was beginning to get cold; at least curled up like this she could conserve heat. She let her gaze be drawn to the flames, watching the embers creep slowly along a branch that stuck out from the circle of fire.

What were they going to be walking into when they finally got home? The Hidden Leaf had been able to unanimously decide on a new Hokage only weeks after the previous one's death; it had been finding her and getting her to accept the position that took the most time. But half a year had passed and the Hidden Sand _still_ had yet to agree upon a new Kazekage. They could very well be walking into a civil war.

It was said that the Kage of a Hidden Village had to be strong, but Temari knew her father had not been strong. He had been petty and ambitious and power-hungry. He had, as she'd learned on the sly, not gained the Kazekage title by strength of arms and wise political decisions, but by threats and a few well-placed daggers in the dark. Ninja clans who were likewise power-hungry and scheming were drawn to him, and went through the dance of being lackeys, equal allies, enemies, neutral advisors, and back to lackeys again in the space of a week. Or went from allies to enemies to dead in the space of a day if they mis-stepped. Her father had not made decisions for the good of Sunagakure, but for the good of his own political power and position. The moral of the city had dropped from more than just the lack of well-paying missions after that retard of a Minister made that ridiculous peace-treaty. Temari had no doubt that there were people dancing in the street when they heard the news of his death.

She also had no doubts that her father's death had left a void that was dangerously unfilled. Those clans who once had their fingers on the pulse of Sunagakure were now nothing without the Kazekage's backing. There would be jockeying for position, political posturing and maneuvering. Threats laced in among the honeyed words.

_Like a nest of scorpions_, she thought in disgust. _No matter where we step, we'll run the risk of being stung._

She did not know where she and her brothers would stand once they reentered the city. As the children of the Kazekage, they had been revered, feared, and perhaps even a little spoiled. All right, more than a little spoiled – she, for instance, could never have become a ninja if she had not been the Kazekage's daughter. There were no female ninja in Sunagakure.

Where once they had been respected ninja of the Hidden Sand, their status as genin not withstanding, Temari knew that she and her brothers would soon be turned into political pawns. There would be many marriage proposals, she suspected – for her and Kankurou at least – in the effort to tie clans in more tightly in with the previous Kazekage's bloodline. (No one in their right mind would offer their daughter in marriage to Gaara, and besides, Temari privately suspected her younger brother would never develop a sex drive.) There would be efforts to get on their good side. There might even be attempts to get Baki replaced in order to get control over the three siblings. And that, of course, was just plain suicidal; Gaara was incredibly resistant to change, and giving the pale-eyed boy a new mentor was just as good as signing that mentor's death certificate.

There would, she knew with awful certainty, be assassination attempts.

Temari moved her gaze back to her brother, watched his eyelids steadily drop lower until there was only the faintest gleam of white against the bruised black of his eyes. She worried about him – she had never seen him freak out like he had during the chuunin exam. Even the first time she had seen his awful transformation into Shukaku, Gaara had been far more calm and in control. He had never been exactly sane in the conventional sense of the word, but he _was_ rational (most of the time) and not all that difficult to work with, so long as she watched her mouth and stayed within the bounds of what did not upset him.

But he had been so _irrational_ during the exam, so blood-thirsty and out-of-control. And in the space of roughly five months he had performed a complete one-eighty, and was now almost… acquiescent. Docile was the word that kept coming to mind. On the rare occasions when she or Kankurou asked him to do something, he had done the task without resistance or even so much as a dirty look.

Kankurou, before they had left Konoha, had mentioned his worry for Gaara. How much more withdrawn he had become. Not absent-minded, but not paying much attention to his surroundings, either. Even though the sand in his gourd would protect him automatically, she feared that inattention might cost him his life once they reentered the Hidden Sand.

Temari wasn't sure where this worry came from. Before the exam she had never seen the red-haired genin take a hit, much less get a scratch on him. In a childish way she had thought it impossible. But experience had shown her that in truth her brother was extremely vulnerable – without the protection of his sand, and without the strength of his chakra, he had no defenses whatsoever. She had already understood Kankurou and her duty in protecting others from Gaara – but never before had she realized that they also needed to protect Gaara from himself. From the urges of the demon Shukaku and from his own incredibly fluctuating instabilities.

She had been wildly excited when she learned she had siblings – immensely pleased when she met Kankurou and horribly disappointed when she met Gaara. She had been hoping for two younger brothers that she could tease and protect; Kankurou, even though he was a year younger, had ended up more like an older brother. He did, after all, currently out-weigh her by nearly forty pounds. But Gaara… had most definitely _not_ fit the role she had imagined for him. She had hoped for a seven year old little brother and had instead gotten a pale-eyed monster.

Maybe all this worry came from the hope she had felt when Gaara had said, "I'm sorry." Hope that maybe somewhere in that apparently soul-less body hid the little brother she had longed for.

She watched in silence as Gaara's eyes finally slid shut.

Temari settled her chin on her knees and studied his face. He looked so much like their father, compared to Kankurou or herself. She had gotten the blonde hair and elf-like features of their mother, and the kugutsu-nin had received the stockier build and darker coloring of their father's father. But Gaara had the same lean build as the late Kazekage, the same dark red hair and aquiline features. Only his eyes were his own.

Their father had hated him. Maybe it was because he harbored a demon that the Kazekage had been unable to control as he wished. But maybe it was because he saw himself in Gaara, saw the demon he had become and the demon he had made his son into, and could not stand the ugliness he saw. Maybe it was because Gaara had taken away his chance to produce more heirs from his wife's bloodline. (Although, really, that was his own fault; Baki had revealed to her that all three pregnancies had been hard on their mother, and three children in roughly three years was too much for many women to take. Birthing a demon-possessed child had only added to the stress that might have killed her anyway.)

But whatever it was that had caused the Kazekage to hate his son so much was a hatred that was shared by everyone else in Sunagakure. The only place Gaara could walk mostly unnoticed was outside of his mother country. And that, Temari thought, was horribly unfair.

She feared her brother sometimes, and with good cause, but she had never hated him. It had always seemed as though no one but she and Kankurou – and Baki, perhaps – could see past the demon inside the boy or the sand that protected him. No one seemed to connect the discoloration around his eyes to the fact that Gaara had never been able to rest more than three hours straight _in his entire life_. That he, an eleven year old child – _no, twelve_, she reminded herself, _his birthday was during the exam_ – could go longer without rest than any grown man, not because he wanted to but because he _had_ to. Because if Gaara fell into a truly deep sleep, Shukaku the demon could suppress the entity that was Gaara the boy and gain control of his body. It had happened more than once, and each time it had scared the shit out of her. She would rather face Gaara and his murderous tendencies than Shukaku. At least Gaara could be reasoned with… most of the time.

And that was why she and Kankurou stood guard at night. Not to watch for enemies, but to watch Gaara and wake him if his control slipped. It wasn't exactly selfless, but it certainly wasn't selfish, either. No one else in Suna would watch over him like they did. She wondered if he knew that.

Maybe someday, if he ever grew to trust them enough, Gaara could even get a full night of uninterrupted sleep. That really would make her day.

The ashes at the outside edge of the fire pit began to stir.

Temari dropped her gaze from the sleeping face of her youngest brother to watch. The particles of fine soot shifted in tiny whirlpools near Gaara's feet, but she knew that the distance was too far for the dust to be disturbed by the rising heat of the flames. The loose layer of soil on the hard-packed surface of the old campsite was also too heavy to be moved by anything less than a stiff breeze, but it was moving all the same. And she, growing master of the currents, knew there was no breeze.

No wonder Gaara appear more tired than usual. He had only just fallen asleep, and already Shukaku was attempting to claim control. The demon was more being more persistent than usual.

The blonde Sand-nin uncurled from her position by the dwindling fire, tucking her legs underneath her and reaching for the small pile of brush she had gathered before the sun went down. She had been forced to pick mostly green branches – it was green branches or rotted logs, and those simply could _not_ be convinced to catch fire – and so when she tossed the handful of twigs into the flames, the wood immediately began to spit and hiss as the sap exploded outward from the pressure.

Gaara's eyes snapped back open, the ashes and soil stopped their sinister dancing, and a tendril of sand whipped in front of him in a defensive gesture. Across the fire, Kankurou's dark form paused in the rhythm of breathing before resuming again.

Temari added a few more handfuls to build the fire up before sitting back again. She met her brother's gaze and tried to smile.

Gaara stared at her briefly, before looking pointedly away. His sand withdrew from sight.

She curled up again, ignoring the heavy lead that seemed to have dropped into her stomach. _Two more days_, she told herself. _Two more days and we'll reach the desert. Then we'll be back with Baki, and he'll know what to do with Gaara. Because I sure as hell don't._

Temari woke Kankurou for his half of the night-watch two hours later. She didn't manage to fall asleep until almost an hour before dawn. It seemed Gaara's insomnia was catching.

.oO0Oo.

The landscape had slowly but surely changed shape around them; the lush, verdant greenery of the Fire Country had given way to the lowland scrub and oaks that marked the territory of the River Country. The small area that the River Country claimed as its own was starkly open in comparison to the forest they had left behind. The only things that grew taller than the traveling genin were the stunted scrub oaks and twisted date palms, whose trunks often bent and grew parallel to the ground from the fierce seasonal winds.

Although the River Country was small compared to its neighbors, the native ninja were ferocious. Kankurou was then suitably surprised that their travel went unmolested. The Hidden Sound and Hidden Sand _had_ forged an alliance for war after all, and some River-nin had been caught in the middle of the fight. He had quite honestly expected at least a display of intimidation while traveling through their territory.

Then again, Gaara's gourd was un-corked and his sand was slithering around him in a decidedly wrathful manner. And he was looking _far_ more alert than he had two days previous. Kankurou knew the sand was not for show, nor to warn off the rattlesnakes they kept encountering in the waist-high palmettos. No, he would lay stake that the River-nin were watching, and too smart to make a move after the stories they had heard about the chuunin exam.

The Sand-nin, unfortunately, could not sense if they were being tailed. Compared to his siblings, the kugutsu-nin's extended senses were pathetic. But he could tell from his brother's sand and the way his sister held her head high to scent the wind that they, at least, were aware of the threat.

Well, so long as he was with these two, it didn't matter that his senses sucked. He was an actor, after all, and he knew how to read body language to discern the hidden truths. All he had to do was keep an eye on his siblings, and he'd have more than ample time to respond to an attack.

Already the saw grass and palm fronds were beginning to thin out, and in the far distance Kankurou could see the undulating, blinding sands of their home country. Eventually the hard-packed, grainy soil would give way to the desert, the brush to cactus to nothing at all. The palms would grow stunted and crooked far past the cactus, but eventually even that would vanish when the ground grew too soft and shifting to support a root system. They had finally reached the eastern edge of the Wind Country.

Kankurou came to a stop and resisted the urge to wipe sweat from his upper lip and possibly smear his face paint. Wearing all black under the rays of a midday sun had been nothing back in Konoha, but out here he felt like he was getting well-baked.

"About where do you think we left it?" he asked aloud.

His sister took a few steps past him, hands on her hips. From this position he could see that the wooden edges of her fan were looking a little chipped. It could probably use a sanding and oiling, too. "Not far from here," she replied. Her eyes were narrowed against the harsh noon sun as she calculated their distance from the landmarks she had memorized.

The kugutsu-nin dragged his eyes away from Temari and glanced over to his younger brother. Gaara had stopped several feet away from them, and was staring out toward the distant desert with a blank look to his face. Now that a good quarter of his sand was curling around his feet, the youngest Sand-nin was standing straighter under the weight of his gourd. The damn thing did, after all, weigh well over fifty pounds when full.

Not that such a paltry weight would bother him. The combined weight of Karasu and Kuroari was almost two hundred pounds – more, if he hadn't specifically designed his dolls to be hollow. He was sacrificing armory for speed and lightness, but Kankurou didn't have the strength or skill to command one of the true juggernauts of the puppeteering world. Just one of those dolls weighed three hundred pounds, and he would be lucky if he had the chakra strength to even twitch a finger. Those things were damn near made of _lead_.

Still, if he knew he wouldn't be killed in the effort, he would offer to shoulder that gourd for Gaara. Karasu was light enough for him to manipulate over the sands at least part of the way to Sunagakure, and god knew Gaara could use the rest.

"Here we go," he heard Temari mutter, and Kankurou turned in time to watch her stalk toward where they had buried their equipment on their first trip through. Scarves to protect the face from blowing sand, smut for the eyes to cut back on the glare of the sun, extra water canteens. Survival gear necessary for the desert, but just a detriment to travel in the forest. They had buried all of it deep to protect it from notice – he could only hope it was still there. And in good condition.

The Sand-nin jogged a few steps to catch up with his sister as she waded through the saw grass. His puppets bounced in the motion, threatening to upset his balance, but he compensated automatically. "They still watching?" he asked her, _sotto voce_.

"One is," she replied in just as low a tone. "The others left about ten minutes ago. He probably stayed behind to make sure we get where it looks like we're going."

He couldn't help but chuckle darkly. "He'll have a while to wait. I don't think we're up to traveling during the day."

Temari grinned. "All this water made us weak."

"Made _you_ weak, maybe." He reached out with a gloved hand to tug lightly on one of her short, frazzled ponytails. "I wasn't the one who squealed in delight when I saw how the showers worked. And god knows _Gaara_ doesn't have the pitch to squeal."

Gaara squealing in delight. Now _there_ was a mental image to give him nightmares.

She batted his hand away and came to a stop. The way she shrugged off the travel gear she carried (she ended up carrying more than her brothers, if only to make up for the relative lightness of her fan) and dropped it to the ground indicated at least a small amount of indignant annoyance at his remark. "I did _not_ squeal. Now shut up and help me make sure this is the spot."

Obligingly, he knelt next to the blonde genin and helped her clear away the scraggly weeds that had grown up over the past six months. Together they scooped out handfuls of the sandy dirt until Temari, covered with grit up to her elbows, found the trowel she had buried about two feet below the surface.

"Looks like shit," he observed as she held up the badly rusted tool. "Hope the rest of our stuff doesn't look this bad."

His sister stuck the handle of the spade in an outside pocket of her traveling pack, securing it in place before rising to her feet. "We wrapped everything tightly," she reminded him, dusting off her hands. "And since we'll be traveling at night, all we'll really need is the canteens. And those are indestructible."

"We can hope, at least." He levered himself to his feet with a grunt. He had taken his gloves off to help dig, but the pale sand was still smeared liberally all over the legs of his pants and sleeves of his shirt. Nothing short of a soaking would get this mess off. Pity.

The kugutsu-nin glanced at his sister, then glanced in unison with her in the direction of their brother. "Hey… Gaara?" Kankurou said hesitantly.

About two yards distant, having never moved from his previous position, their brother's pale eyes shifted in their direction. He didn't even bother to turn his head.

"Could you...?" Temari paused as she picked up the request, then made a rotating gesture with one hand. She looked just as uncertain about asking for Gaara's help as he felt, but it would save them hours of work if he obliged.

The youngest Sand-nin's eyes closed, and his chest expanded and contracted in what was probably an annoyed sigh. He made a sweeping motion with one hand, palm down, and his siblings were forced to scramble backwards as the earth shifted beneath their feet. Temari's quick reflexes were all that kept her portion of the traveling gear from sliding down into the rapidly expanding hole.

The rest of the afternoon was spent digging out and cleaning off the equipment, and lazily preparing for their trip across the desert. The walls of the six-foot trench Gaara had created refused to stay stable, and more than once Kankurou had found himself buried to the hips as he passed the wrapped bundles up to his sister. Surprisingly enough, everything was in good shape, and since Baki was not with them the genin had the added security of his canteens. The watchful presence of the River-nin did not disappear, their hidden guard following as they retreated from the sand-line to the last water source they had crossed.

After the scarves had been soaked (along with Kankurou's sadly sand-encrusted outfit) and the canteens cleaned and refilled, it was just a matter of wasting time until the sun went down.

.oO0Oo.

"Are you going to miss it?" Temari asked.

Kankurou scrubbed harder at the stubborn face paint that refused to leave the creases around his eyes. "Miss what?"

"This," she replied, and he blinked past the water to see her gesture broadly at the campsite. He understood that the gesture was all encompassing – that she meant the trees, the wildlife, the dappled shadows, the small creek. And more than that, probably; he was sure she also meant Konoha, and its people, and its food, and its freedom. No one had given her strangely disappointed stares when they realized she was a ninja. There had been a peace in that anonymity for all of them.

The kugutsu-nin dipped his hood in the creek, twisting and squeezing the stiff fabric. "I guess. I mean, home has its own perks as well."

The blonde genin scowled at him. She was leaning back against the trunk of a tree, legs folded underneath her. The grey fabric of her dress had ridden up so that he could see where the wire-mesh stocking ended on her upper thigh. He briefly considered playing the big-brother (even if he _wasn't_ older than her) and telling her to pull down her skirt, but decided he liked his head more where it was.

"Like what?" she demanded. "Drought and disease?"

Kankurou sat back on his heels and ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. Trying to find the right thing to say when she was in a bitter mood was oftentimes hard. "Well… the sunsets. I've never seen a sunset out here that could compare to a sunset – or a sunrise – in Sunagakure."

She seemed to deflate slightly, which gave him the hope that he had (for a change) said the right thing. "Yeah…"

"And there's more than that." The Sand-nin wrung the excess water from his hood and slapped it over his shoulder before standing to approach his sister. The water that seeped through his wire-mesh undershirt was cool and not at all unpleasant. "There's… well. There's also the sand paintings. And the blown-glass sculptures."

Temari tilted her head to look up at him, then away as he sat down. "The music," she added, getting into the swing of it. "The abbey of the Sand Priests."

"Wasabi."

The siblings looked up sharply at the unexpected addition. Gaara blinked owlishly at them from across the campsite.

Kankurou didn't bother containing the wide grin that spread across his features. It was about damn time his brother had tried contributing to the conversation, and he couldn't help but love it when Gaara actually talked about something that didn't involve blood, death, or other such depressing topics. "They sold wasabi in Konohagakure," he replied. "Besides, I saw you eating it. You damn near hogged the whole bowl."

This earned a narrowed look from the other boy before he directed his gaze to some distant point off in the scrub forest. "Inferior quality," was his disinterested rejoinder.

Temari huffed faintly to Kankurou's right. "Well, at least one of us is happy to be going home," she muttered.

Gaara obviously didn't care enough to make a response to that, and Kankurou… well, he felt it was better to say nothing at all. He would be lying if he said he wasn't looking forward to returning to Suna. Because, as much as all the traveling and seeing new sights appealed to him, it meant nothing if he didn't have a home to come back to.

He missed his workshop, nestled in the back of the house he had been forced to share with Baki and his siblings since he was nine. He missed working on the generators and water collectors/purifiers that were vital for survival in the desert. He missed the dry air and lack of humidity and the static electricity that raced across his skin when a sandstorm was blowing in his direction He missed Tomiji, the head of the puppet troupe, and all the other players as well. He missed Baki.

But he also understood the reasons why Temari didn't want to go back. Of course, Kankurou couldn't _empathize_ with her, as he was most certainly not _female_, but he still knew the reasons were logical. Sunagakure could be incredibly suppressive, and his sister just didn't fit the submissive role that was demanded of women in his hometown. He just wished that she would _trust_ him, that she would have faith that he would _never_ allow the Council to withdraw her status as a ninja just because the Kazekage was dead. Gaara might not give a damn either way, but Kankurou did, and he would fight any effort to that affect with tooth and nail.

Kankurou didn't want to look too deeply into what might happen in the future. It was easier to deal with things as they came, and too much crystal-gazing got depressing. All he really wanted was to protect his siblings and make sure they survived the things that would inevitably come. Everything else was irrelevant.

Although both of them would kill him if he ever implied they _needed_ protecting.

The kugutsu-nin stifled a sigh and forced himself to think instead about how nice it would be to have his own bed again. And to see Tomiji's daughter again. Six months was a long time for someone his age; there was a good chance she had finally managed to fill out that kimono he had last seen her in.

Oh yeah. There were _plenty_ of good reasons to go home.

He reached for his travel pack, planning on drying off his face and reapplying his paint. Temari chose that moment to sigh loudly and stretch her legs out in front of her. The fabric of her dress finally slid down to what he considered an acceptable level.

"I'm going to miss the shadows," she said absently, eyes unfocused as she gazed back the way they had come.

Kankurou had a strong feeling she was talking about something else entirely.

"There are no shadows in the desert," Gaara said. "Not at full noon." There was a harshness to his voice, a deliberate cruelty, that made the kugutsu-nin want to hiss at him to shut up. That tone was usually a precursor to further scathing nastiness, and he just didn't want to deal with it tonight.

The blonde genin closed her eyes in a pained-angered-hurt-like-she'd-been-slapped expression and turned her head away in silence.

Kankurou glared across the camp at his younger brother. Gaara just ignored him, as he was so fond of doing. The Sand-nin had a strong feeling that his sister was talking about something else, and he had an even _stronger_ feeling that Gaara knew this, too.

He always got off on making people miserable. The goddamn prick.

The sudden silence was no longer comfortable, as it had been earlier in the day. Instead it had become the cold, deafening silence that usually appeared in the aftermath of Gaara opening his mouth. And it was probably going to last all the way to Sunagakure.

Kankurou pressed his lips together in a tight line and began removing the paint from his travel pack.

.oO0Oo.

They ate a light meal while the sun sank below the western horizon. The siblings built no fire to cook fresh food, although Kankurou could have caught some fish with his chakra strings; instead, the course consisted of the standard ninja MREs they were supplied with back at Konoha. Unlike the rations from their hometown, though, _these_ were actually fit for human consumption. 

In the kind of semi-psychic synchronicity that only years of close contact could create, the three Sand-nin had their meager belongings packed and were on their way before the first star appeared in the sky. They walked into the setting sun with their heads bent low, scarves veiling their eyes from the blinding light.

Their hidden, watchful companion stopped following when the saw grass lost its tenuous hold against the sand. By the time they had passed the last crooked date palm and entered the desert for real, the sun was gone and the moon held reign in the sky.

Traveling in the desert could be a far more dangerous thing than people realized. If someone was foolish enough to travel during the day (and inevitably, most people did even when they didn't _have_ to), dehydration was definitely at the top of the list of worst problems – followed closely by heat stroke, misdirection by mirages, being attacked by buzzard hawks (who didn't _always_ wait for you to die first), and being poisoned by upsetting scorpions, tarantulas, sidewinders, or cobras. Traveling by night wasn't much better; dehydration was still at the top of the list, followed by misdirection by not being able to discern landmarks, getting attacked by buzzard hawks (who didn't seem to follow the general rule of being active by day and sleeping by night) and being poisoned by upsetting scorpions, tarantulas, sidewinders, or cobras.

Sometimes, when Temari was feeling especially bitter, she wondered why anyone had bothered to settle out here in the first place.

The trick to traveling across a desert, the oldest Sand-nin had learned, was to simply not stop moving. Stopping to take a rest was probably the most risky move any person could make, because it was usually the stopping that got a person in trouble with the wildlife. It was important to keep concentrating on putting one foot in front of another, to pick a pace that could be maintained for an indefinite amount of time, and to _always_ keep your eyes on the horizon. It was easy to be lulled by the apparent changelessness of the scenery, and as soon as one dropped their eyes to, say, a few yards in front of their feet, and started to day-dream – that was it. Said traveler had just lost their way and probably wouldn't find it again before the sun came up.

The sky, however, had stars. This may seem painfully obvious, but she had often found that the amateur traveler never thought to use them to their advantage. When the sun was up, one could use the sun (so long as it wasn't within an hour of high noon) to determine direction; by night, one could use the stars. And it was by the heavens alone that one could find their way in the Wind Country, because the natural iron ore deposits deep beneath the surface wrecked havoc on a standard compass.

As usual, Kankurou started out in the lead. He almost always started out the lead in everything, whether it was walking through a desert or walking into a Hidden Village where they were going to facilitate a war under the false pretense of entering a chuunin exam. Of the three of them, the kugutsu-nin gave the best first impression – Temari found it incredibly hard to look notable when her younger brother was built like a freaking ox and painted his face to resemble some kind of demented tiger. It did, however, give Gaara and her a much easier time of escaping notice and kicking ass later on when others misjudged them.

Which happened… an awful lot, really.

They trudged across the desert in a straight line – Kankurou first, Gaara second, and Temari trailing along third. The hard-packed earth they once had the luxury of traveling over had turned into the soft, deep dunes that undulated endlessly toward all horizons save the east. The further west they traveled, the higher the swells of sand rose, the deeper the troughs between peaks grew. If it wasn't for the wall-walking jutsu, all three of them would have been floundering up to their knees in the reddish sand. Even though the delicate use of chakra prevented them from having to struggle _too_ much, Temari still found herself forced to her hands and knees in order to climb up the monstrous waves, and sliding down them to reach the bottom.

Her only consolation to the irritating itch of sand inside her sandals and other… places… was that Kankurou and Gaara weren't doing any better.

Midnight came and went. They did not stop to eat or rest, and drank the absolute minimum of water possible. Since sunset the temperature had been dropping steadily; without any clouds to mar the perfect dome of starlight above them, there was nothing to lock in the heat after the sand itself had cooled off. It was not unusual for it to drop close to freezing during the night, and if there had been more humidity in the air there probably would be frost. This night, however, the temperature did not drop low enough for Temari to see her breath condense in the air before her – although it was still uncomfortably cool.

At some point the dunes started to grow smaller in size, the slopes a little less steep, and when Kankurou paused a moment to knock back a swallow of water from his canteen, Gaara passed him without a glance. And after that it was Kankurou and Temari pacing silently side-by-side, following the silent form of their little brother, and the blonde Sand-nin found it strange how that was the way it always ended up. In the end, it was always Gaara, the youngest and the smallest, who took the lead.

While this didn't _bother_ Temari, per say, she could understand why it sometimes confused people outside of their small circle. She couldn't say it worked like that because he was smarter, or faster, or stronger than them (though she could at least agree on the lattermost), or if it was fear that encouraged her and her other brother to just let him take charge. She didn't think Kankurou could exactly put a finger on why, either. Especially since Gaara was so damn _good_ at pissing them off.

It was amazing that they even managed to function as a team at all.

The swells of sand gradually shrunk to a more easily managed size; far off in the distance, the blonde Sand-nin could see where the mesa of her home town was located by the strip of darkness on the horizon where no stars could be seen. The ground grew firmer, the soil rockier, and vegetation began to creep back into the environment. More than once they crossed the lazy, meandering tracks of a sidewinder, or saw the dark shape of a horny toad scuttle out from beneath their feet. The non-stop whirr of cicadas started off a low, buzzing background noise, but the further they got back into a more hospitable region, the louder and more insistent the sound grew.

Temari hadn't been paying too close attention to their travel, only making certain that the North Star stayed on her right. It wasn't until she saw the long, circular shadows of ash and scorch marks on the rocks beneath their feet that she realized just how far north Gaara had angled.

A few inches of half-burnt, precious wood crunched underfoot when she came to a stop. "We've come too far north," she said. It was, to her knowledge, the first thing she had said since they had entered the desert.

Kankurou took a few more steps forward before coming to a halt himself. Gaara ignored her; he went all the way to the edge of the ravine before finally pausing and looking back at them over his shoulder.

"I know," he said simply, and turned back to look down into the gully.

Temari looked uneasily up at her brother. The painted face of the kugutsu-nin looked a little unsettled as well. She had never liked coming out here, to Sunagakure's graveyard – it seemed as though the ghosts of the deceased had tainted the rocks and left a sour, angry feeling to the ground. It made her hackles rise and her stomach churn.

Kankurou sighed through his nose, and the lines on his face eased into resignation. "Come on," he muttered, hooking a thumb under the strap of his travel pack. "Might as well get it over with."

She scowled at his back when he turned away. "I don't like indulging his morbid tendencies," she replied in an undertone, but found herself following anyways.

Grit scuttled down the edge of the ravine when the two Sand-nin joined their sibling – Temari to his right, Kankurou to his left. The ravine could almost be better described as a canyon, although it was not quite large enough; the cliffs were tall enough and steep enough to give anyone (besides a ninja, at least) a rough time getting to the bottom. The steps that had been carved into the ancient granite rock wound back and forth across the cliff face; Temari had always refused to enter the graveyard, but she guessed the steps numbered easily into the hundreds.

The diffused starlight did a horribly good job of reaching the sandy bottom so far below them. Somehow, despite the winds that oftentimes howled across the desert and piled buckets of sand against the walls of homes in Suna, the cairns of the dead below were never buried. Sometimes the wind would rip away the neat little crosses that were staked at the head of each pile of stones, or blow away the stones themselves, but never was the graveyard ever buried.

Down below were the markers of those who had deceased over the last hundred years of Sunagakure's existence. It was a deformed forest of small, sadly sun-rotted crosses.

Temari hated it here, hated the sight of all those empty graves and the smell of burnt wood (and faintly, burnt flesh) that clung to the stones where the dead were ceremonially set alight. She was no stranger to death, knew it intimately enough, but there was something about this place that wasn't… right. Like the spirits were bitter when they finally passed on, like the grief of their loved ones had soaked into the ground. Like it was some kind of ancient battleground where both sides suffered grievous losses and neither really won.

"God," Kankurou murmured under his breath. "How many more?"

The oldest Sand-nin shifted her eyes to the far side of the ravine, where the newest cairns were erected. The color of the rocks on those cairns indicated they were not as old as the ones that surrounded them, the crosses not as bone-pale and sun-bleached. She tried not to count, but her mind worked against her; even the briefest glance had numbers automatically being estimated.

"Thirty-five," she said, and deliberately looked away. "Or so."

Gravel scraped beneath the kugutsu-nin's feet as he shifted. "That's an awful lot of people to die in six months."

_Drought and disease_, Temari thought. With the Kazekage's attempt at waging war with the Hidden Leaf, several of the other countries had imposed an embargo on the city. She had no doubt that infections or other easy-to-take-care-of problems were the primary cause of most of the deaths.

Gaara made a non-committal noise and turned back toward Sunagakure. "They're dead," he replied. "Who cares how it happened? The fact doesn't change."

The youngest Sand-nin continued his trek toward the mesa his home city was centered in; his siblings only stared at the graveyard a bit longer, before looking in unison at each other.

_Sometimes I wish he wouldn't talk_, Kankurou mouthed silently.

Temari just hitched her travel pack higher and turned to follow. She was too tired to get into another fight.

Half an hour later they walked through the gates of Sunagakure. And, unsurprisingly, the act was marked by silence.

.oO0Oo.

The door to their house was open. 

Kankurou couldn't say he found that surprising. Six months was a long time to be gone; if he and his siblings had lived in an apartment, it would have a new tenant, even if they had paid the months of rent in advance. No, he didn't find it surprising that the door had been picked and that sand was piled up inside the doorway nearly to his knees. Disappointing, but not surprising.

"… think they got through the seals?"

His sister sounded tired. Looked tired. Twelve straight hours of travel could do that to a person. Dust smeared her face except for where sweat had drawn thin tracks through the grit from hairline to jaw. He probably looked worse. God knew what the guards had thought when they passed through the gates.

"Maybe," he said, but he doubted it. Temari's seals weren't the best, and Gaara didn't care enough to bother, but Kankurou felt he had some legitimate pride in his own work. And he never set a seal without setting a trap to go with it – sometimes two. If anyone managed to get past the seals _and_ the traps… well, they were welcome to whatever they wanted. Someone like that certainly had more skill than the common vandal.

Gaara pushed past them and entered the doorway. He didn't bother to brush away the sand in the tiny foyer, merely slogging through it to the steps that lead up to the inner door. Kankurou and Temari followed, even though there was barely enough room for three ninja and their equipment on the porch.

The seals on the inner door were still intact (even if the paper was yellowed and brittle from the dry desert air), but the kugutsu-nin was too tired to smirk. As expected; a ninja of the Hidden Sand wouldn't find anything of interest in their home, and a punk that was looking to sell someone else's VCR wouldn't bother trying to get around a seal in the first place. It was too much work with not enough reward.

He went up the steps – four of them – and went through the complex set of hand-seals he had developed for this particular jutsu. Chakra was applied to the lock and to the hinges, and the binding that had been set six months ago through the placement of the paper seals dissolved. The trap beyond the door would still be activated as soon as he turned the latch, but at least the door _would_ open. Binding jutsu were incredibly useful skills to pick up.

Not bothering to remove the calligraphic paper pasted to the wooden frame – appearances could be deceiving, after all, and it wouldn't hurt to let people think the seal was still in place – Kankurou twisted the knob and pulled open the door.

He was prepared for the oncoming assault of senbon needles, but none came.

_Funny_, he thought. _The trap couldn't have broken down after only six months, could it?_

"What is it?" Temari asked in a low voice when he did not immediately move into the house.

Kankurou's lips twisted downward at the edges. Sand caked into the folds of his face ground against his skin in the movement. "… I think I left the coffee pot on when we left."

"Tch." His sister came up the steps behind him, nudged him in the kidney with a fingertip. "Don't be retarded. Get inside before I hit you."

He obliged. Three steps and the trap still did not go off. Darkness obscured the far corners of the room, barely lit by the dim morning light that poured in through the open door and through the cracks on the shuttered (and also sealed) windows. Inside, the house was buried in several inches of dust and sand that got in through the cracks under the doors and between the window panes during sandstorms. The wooden platform that circled the room was more obviously worse for wear than the sunken living room floor; the yellowish-tan tiles were made to hide the sand that got in no matter what one did to prevent it. The television was still in its usual place to his left, in the corner of the room. He could see the remote where he had left it on the coffee table. There was a rectangle of clean red wood beneath it that was perpendicular to how it was lying.

Kankurou turned to his right, taking another step and clearing the doorway so that his siblings could get through. The house had that musty scent of a place closed up too long, of stale air and, very vaguely, dirty laundry. He could see better into the kitchen from this angle, over the bar counter and under the cabinets that created a kind of window into the room. There was enough light coming in through the front door that he could see the smudges in the dust on the bat-wing doors.

Temari didn't remark on the footprints in the dirt that criss-crossed the living area, from the door to the kitchen to the couches to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Neither did Gaara.

The trap _still_ did not go off.

The blonde Sand-nin rested her fists on her hips, tilted her head back and sniffed the air. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," she said. "I don't smell burnt coffee."

"My bad," he said absently. He reached behind the door to flip the light switch – up, then down, then up again. No lights came on. "I meant when we left Konoha."

A much-abused travel pack hit the wooden planking with a dull _thud_. "Retard," the girl repeated herself, massaging her shoulder with a grimace. "We didn't have a coffee pot in Konoha."

Their little brother slipped through the door and stepped off the platform, ghosting across the room in that eerie, silent way of his. The room was dark from the shuttered windows, but Kankurou could still see the way the dust fluttered around the genin's feet to hide his passing footprints. "Shikamaru did," the kugutsu-nin said.

"No, he didn't," she countered.

This gained Kankurou's full attention, and he was unable to quell the rising of his brows. "How would you know? We never went to his house."

There was _more_ than enough light in the room to high-light the blush that came over her grimy features. "Uh – "

"Here," Gaara said.

He filed that bit of information away for future reference (and teasing) and turned to look across the room. The red-haired genin was standing in the shadows of the hallway, right underneath the trap. He held up a small bit of parchment, but it was too far away for Kankurou to read.

"Great," he mumbled, and took the step down off the platform. Looked like whoever slipped through his binding jutsu, disable his trap, meandered all over his house, and then _re_activated his binding jutsu, had also decided to leave a note just to piss him off. And he had a bad feeling he knew who it was, too. Bastard.

Grit crunched beneath his sandals as he stalked across the living room and snatched the note from his brother's hand. Gaara gave him one of his _looks_, but withdrew down the hallway into the gloom of darkness without comment.

Scribbled on the parchment was a single sentence: _Need more practice._

"God damnit," he swore.

Temari leaned around his shoulder to get a look at the note herself. Kankurou had to force himself not to startle; couldn't she learned to make a little more noise when she was in her own home?

"Baki?" she asked.

He pushed the note at her, scowling. The hand-writing had been too obviously that of their instructor; he had a bad habit of smearing the ink with the blade of his palm because he didn't keep his hand high enough off the paper. That wasn't something easily mimicked. "Yeah. Smug asshole, doing all that and making us think someone had laid traps or was still waiting in the house. He really gets a stiffy off of pissing me off."

The blonde looked up at him under her eyebrows, her way of communicating amusement when she was worried that saying it aloud would only insult him. "Are you so sure there aren't?"

"Any more traps?" He blew out a sigh and slid a thumb under the tie that held his dolls strapped onto his back. "Are you kidding? If there were, we would have sprung them just walking across the room." The kugutsu-nin carefully undid the buckles over his chest and gently set his dolls down on the tiled floor. His travel pack quickly followed. "I'm more interested in finding out how he unsealed my jutsu – and then _re_sealed it."

Temari shrugged, one shoulder and the arm attached to it rising in the motion, hand palm up with the paper stuck between two fingers. "Admit it, Kankurou – you suck."

"Bite me." He tilted his head back, squinting in the effort to see through the darkness. The trap that he _had_ set up in the corner of the hallway was almost completely dismantled. The chakra strings he had used to connect the trigger to the door had been dissolved (although the ones holding it in place were untouched), the needles and the simple throwing mechanism still intact. Man, now he was going to go _insane_ from waiting until Baki showed him that trick… after all, their mentor didn't know the _exact_ hand-seals Kankurou had used, because he had sealed up the house after the other three had left. Unless he had been spying?

The Sand-nin let out an annoyed sigh and shook his head. There was nothing to be done about it now. He would just have to strangle the trick out of Baki later.

He looked back to his sister. "We're out of power," he said heavily. "The generators probably got clogged, or maybe the solar panels need cleaning. If someone was siphoning we'd at least get _some_ power."

The blonde nodded, looking toward the television in the corner. "We must have had power not that long back, though, or Baki would've had no use for the news."

"Lazy bastard," Kankurou swore again. "He could have at least swept up a little."

Temari shook her head, grinning. It was easy to see how much this was amusing her. _At my expense, I'm sure_, the kugutsu-nin thought sullenly.

"Well, if there's no power there's no running water," she said matter-of-factly. "We'll just have to take care of it later. I need a nap more than I need a bath, anyways."

"Me, too," he replied truthfully. It was a relief to finally get the weight off his back – the muscles across his chest and ribs were tight with strain, and he knew he'd have to be careful with his stretches later on, or he'd stiffen up something awful. Everything was sore, really, because scrambling through sand dunes was no easy task for even the most experienced nomad.

He turned with the intent of checking the bindings on the bedroom doors, eyes finally adjusted to the dim light of the house. But no amount of adjusting could have prepared him for the surprise of nearly walking into his brother, who had come up behind him without a sound.

Kankurou took a swift step backward to keep from losing his balance. Gaara and Temari both! Couldn't either of them learn to make some _noise_ once in a while?

"Gaara," he said, sounding more startled than he wanted. "Don't creep up on me like that."

His younger brother gave him an annoyed look. In the bright light of day, Gaara's pupils were so contracted that they seemed to vanish; but in the darkness, like this, they widened again, threatening to swallow the pale green of his iris. In the dark, his eyes almost looked normal – except for the way those eyes caught the light and reflected it when he glanced back at Temari.

Seeing that never failed to remind Kankurou of his first night in Konoha, of walking down one of those damp alleyways and startling the local cats. The way they had glared out from their hiding spots with baleful, luminescent green eyes.

It was just plain creepy.

"The seals on our doors are untouched," Gaara stated blandly. His eyes flicked back up to Kankurou, and the angle prevented any more refraction of light. "Baki's room is open, but unused."

The kugutsu-nin withheld the jealous urge to ask how, exactly, Gaara knew the seals had not been touched, when he, the _maker_ of those seals, was unable to. It was a pointless question.

"He must not have spent much time here in the last three months," Temari said behind him. "The Council must keep him busy."

"Maybe." Kankurou edged around his younger brother to peer into the room in question. The bed was still made (in Baki's signature sheets-could-bounce-a-dime style) and covered in a thin layer of dust. In the far corner of the otherwise Spartan room there was a hamper of dirty laundry. There was also only one set of footprints in the dust on the floor.

"Then why did he reseal the house?" he asked the empty room. "Baki knew when we would get back."

"Maybe he locked up a while ago, or wasn't planning on coming back," the oldest Sand-nin suggested.

"Or maybe it was to piss you off," Gaara added in a bored tone.

Kankurou glared over his shoulder at his brother. He was stoically ignored.

"Screw it," he said, and stalked into his mentor's bedroom. "I'm too tired to undo the other seals. He deserves to get sand in his sheets, anyways."

"_Now_ who's the lazy bastard?" Temari asked he seated himself on the bed and began removing his sandals. She stepped forward far enough that she could lean one shoulder on the door-jam. "Besides, the bed already _has_ sand in it."

"_More_ sand," Kankurou said with exaggerated patience, and threw his sandal at her. "Nitpick."

She caught it and threw it back at his feet with enough force to score a hiss when he didn't draw them back fast enough. "Whatever. If you try to hog the pillow, I'll kill you."

The bed was not a terribly large one, but big enough to fit two children – three was a squeeze, but do-able. As the blonde Sand-nin relieved herself of her fan, Kankurou looked past her to where Gaara still stood in the hallway. He was staring toward the open front door with a suspiciously blank look on his face. "If you're tired, there's room for three, y'know."

The red-haired genin didn't look over or even blink. "No," he said.

Which was the response the kugutsu-nin had been expecting. He couldn't help but make the offer anyways. It would have felt… odd… if he hadn't.

"Whatever," he said, and let himself fall back onto the mattress. A cloud of dust rose up in the air, forcing him to close his eyes and try not to cough. "Just kick me if you want some space."

Gaara did not bother to respond. By the time Kankurou had reopened his eyes, his brother had vanished from the hallway, and his sister was smacking him with her sandal for more room on the bed. They fought briefly over the pillow, which threw up an unholy amount of sand and dust. By the time his internal clock (and the rising temperature) told him it was a half-hour past sunrise, Temari had one half of the bed and the pillow, and Kankurou had the other half with no pillow at all (he preferred to consider it not a loss, but a gallant sacrifice on his part). The sheets remained crumpled beneath them, as it was already too hot for covers.

He didn't bother to remove his hood or any other apparel save his shoes; neither did Temari. With his sister curled up on her side to his left, back toward him, Kankurou stared at the ceiling for all of fifteen seconds before he fell asleep.

.oO0Oo.

At a point that felt like a few hours after noon, Kankurou woke back up. 

But he couldn't really call it waking, per say; it was more like sleeping while being completely aware of his surroundings. Just being able to lie on a soft surface, in a place that smelled like home, _felt_ like home, was enough to lull him into the half-state between sleeping and consciousness. He could hear the soft breathing of his sister beside him, the sound of someone tinkering around in the front room (but not a bad kind of tinkering – the quiet kind that sounded like Gaara messing around in the kitchen; he was so _weird_ about keeping the kitchen clean), the faint catcalls of merchants closer to town showing off their wares. It was comfortable, and the feeling of _rightness_ cradled his senses.

But the passage of time was impossible to track in that state, even for his internal clock, so Kankurou had no idea how long he had been sleeping when Gaara reentered the bedroom. He didn't really know _how_ he knew his brother was there – he didn't make even the ghost of a sound when he moved. Maybe it was that smell he had come to associate with the red-head's sand, that scent of blood and hot desert air. Whatever it was, it alerted him so that he wasn't alarmed when the mattress on his side of the bed dipped under someone else's weight.

Kankurou rolled over onto his left side, flung an arm over his sister, and nudged the back of Temari's skull with his forehead until she gave up some of the pillow she had stolen. She just jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow (but not quite hard enough to hurt) and rolled over onto her stomach, away from him. Gaara slid into the space provided and did his best not to touch Kankurou or fall off the bed. The mattress underneath them shifted and squeaked as they made room for one another.

Eventually the three of them got situated – Gaara and Kankurou back-to-back on their sides, Temari on her stomach with Kankurou's arm over her shoulders. It was warm in the room and warm where their bodies were forced to touch, and frankly they could all use a good long bath with lots of soap – but it was, the kugutsu-nin thought, incredibly comfortable. It smelled and felt like home.

" 'Night," he mumbled.

"S'not night, stupid," Temari said in a sleepy tone, voice muffled by the pillow.

Gaara, of course, said nothing. But that was the way it was supposed to be.

Kankurou smiled and fell back asleep.

.oO0Oo.

-end chapter-


	2. Two

Generic Disclaimer: Naruto not mine. Woe.

Everything else: Meant to take place in the time between chapters 238 and 245. Probably AU as hell, but since canon doesn't really tell us much about what happened, even after the whole Gaara-arc, so other than slipping in our favorite old bag lady I feel like I can pretty much continue on the vein I had originally planned.

And I suppose I owe an apology for taking over a year to finish this second chapter, cough cough. I got sidetracked with developing other characterizations (primarily Asuma), and the characterizations for the Sandsibs kinda got pushed into the wayside. And, you know, when you're writing detailed RPs that might as well be stories in and of themselves you kinda lose interest in writing _actual _stories. Excuses, excuses. Enjoy chapter two!

* * *

.oO0Oo.

CRITICAL POINT

Chapter Two

.oO0Oo.

The door to the house was open.

It was an hour to sunset. Streamers of gold and burnt orange and mauve wreathed the western skies to his right, tinting the cliffs of the ancient mesa red like blood. The home in question was on the north-eastern edge of Sunagakure, dangerously close to the wall of its natural enclosure. Really, all of the ninja housing was at risk of mudslide or flash flood in the rainy season, but this modest, one-story adobe home was more at risk than the others.

Hachi suspected the home was built so far away from the rest of housing for a very, very good reason.

He had already taken the time to scout the perimeter. There was no sign of life within the house – all the windows were shuttered, no entrance save the front door, the water purifiers out back silent, the shed locked; it looked, for all intents and purposes, uninhabited.

But he had the word of a reliable source that the house _was_ inhabited, by his targets, which he could only assume (from the lack of activity over the last few hours) were either asleep or otherwise occupied.

A trickle of sweat ran down the crease between cheek and nose. The ninja stuck a finger under his red and gray ANBU mask to wipe the irritation away.

He didn't think he was ready for this. He had just been raised to jounin a month ago (he passed the exam only because his opponent fainted from blood-loss and heat stroke), and the ANBU tattoo on his upper arm still itched and chaffed horribly under his desert robes. He was sweating more from the thought of going into that home than he was from the afternoon heat, but the thought of _not_ going in…

Not going in wasn't an option.

The adobe home was built just like all the others in housing – there were only three or four types of floor plans, and the only _real_ difference between them was how many bedrooms there were. The outer door was just a way to try and keep out the encroaching sand; inside was a small room typically used to hang desert apparel and clean off. He imagined the house would probably be dusty from months of disuse, his targets tired from travel (they had chosen the direct route across the Waste rather than head to the capital by train and then cross the relatively mild landscape of the Lower Steppe) and quite possibly unprepared for an attack. They were still genin, after all. It was possible that Hachi could rely upon their inexperience and lack of paranoia to make this job easier.

Then again, there was a notoriously long list of deceased ninja under Gaara's belt, and all three _were_ the children of the late Kazekage. It would be best not to underestimate any of them.

He took a breath, let it out slowly. Slipped a kunai out of his thigh holster and proceeded to enter the small porch.

The space inside the porch was shin-high in sand; the outside entrance had, apparently, been left open during the last sandstorm (or two). Cobwebs littered the corners where the walls met the gritty floor (the walls he could almost touch if he stretched his arms out) and hung from the coat hooks bolted into the adobe to his right. Six old, yellowed seals were plastered onto the inner door and over the gap between the door and the frame.

Three were on the door itself, one on the frame over the lock, and two over the hinges. He could not sense if the binding jutsu was still in place (that type of jutsu did not leave behind the characteristic chakra residue), but he _could_ see the creases in the seals over the hinges. The door had been opened recently.

Hachi felt a brief, giddy lift of relief at the sight. It was, frankly, amateur – too obvious, reminiscent of a genin who had too much confidence in his own abilities, too much faith that he was strong enough to deflect any attack that came his way. It was hard to imagine Hachi himself had ever been that stupid.

But the ninja put a damper on the relief he felt; he could not allow it to distract him. He could not allow himself to become over-confident.

The ANBU went through a short series of hand seals, preparing himself for the gloom and darkness he knew to be beyond the door. It wouldn't do to be startled because of sun-blindness. He hopped up to the top step, the hem of his robes dragging over the sand piled at the bottom of the stairs. Cautiously wrapping his hand around the doorknob, the ninja tested to see if it was locked.

It was not. The latch turned easily (and quietly) under his palm; he pulled the door open.

There was no tug on the door to indicate he had sprung a trap – nothing but the almost inaudible _fwoosh_ of suddenly airborne objects. Hachi whirled backward and to his right, behind the concealment of the door. But not quite fast enough; the edge of his cloak tore under the assault of the missiles. There were multiple, faint thuds of impact on the far side of the wood.

Silence. Hachi leaned backward, remaining behind the door as he pulled it open again. This time he could feel the resistance of the trap, but only barely; it must have been set with a hair-fine trigger.

_Not bad at all_, he thought. If the trap had _truly_ been silent, he probably would have never known it was there. Perhaps the children were more paranoid than he had previously thought.

The ninja pulled lightly on the door, attempting to retrigger the trap, but there was no further assault. Deciding that more caution was necessary, Hachi went through another series of hand seals, directing chakra to heighten his sense of hearing and smell. He had anticipated no real problems until he had actually _gotten_ to his targets, but… Well, they _were_ Baki's students. He had thought the only one he would really need to worry about was Gaara; perhaps he had better amend that thought before it got him killed.

Hachi pulled open the door again and slipped inside. His eyes, already sharpened by chakra, picked out the details of the living room in stark relief; the eye-holes of his mask limited his range of vision, but so little as to be nearly unnoticeable.

An old television set, two battered couches. Bat-wing doors leading to an enclosed kitchen. Two candle stubs on the counter of the window looking into the kitchen. The odor of a house closed up too long, burnt matches, dirty laundry – something just a tad too sweet and sick, like death, but very faint. A worn travel pack by his feet, another one at the entrance of the hallway, an unidentifiable bundle – was that hair or fur peeking out of one end? – lying next to it. A lax, barely visible glimmer of wire, stretching from the knob of the door to where the trap had been attached to the ceiling in the hallway across the room.

The ANBU briefly fingered the wire, looking over the needles that had embedded themselves in the door. Several more were sticking out of the sand in the foyer, a scrap of his cloak pinned to the ground. It was a crude trap, but effective. More so if a second trap had been set, triggered by a trip-wire or by the door closing again. Hachi considered it in his favor that there had been only one.

Leaving the door open (it was unwise to close any avenue of escape), the robed ninja stepped lightly off the wooden step and moved delicately across the sandy, unmarked floor. Although there were no more wires that he could see, no obvious signs of chakra or explosive tags, something about the house seemed… off. His targets hadn't even bothered to unpack their equipment, so it seemed unlikely that there were any more traps.

Something in the way his stomach fluttered told him he was missing something. Was that fear? Or the faintly strengthening scent of death?

He paused at the mouth of the hallway. There were five doors here: two on the left, two on the right, and one straight ahead that was obviously the entrance to the bathroom. The two doors on his left and the one furthest away on his right were all closed, the yellowed seals giving the binding jutsu away. Another traveling bag was leaning in the corner by the bathroom door, along with a cracked gourd that stood almost to his hip.

Hachi swallowed and eyed the gourd warily. The smell was stronger now, more pungent, like the scent of old, sun-dried blood. It made the hair along his arms and the back of his neck stand up. It was a good sign, he thought, that the gourd was not physically _with_ the Kazekage's youngest son, but its presence alone was unnerving. The sand it contained had been soaked with the blood of an unknown number of ninja, of enemies and allies to Sunagakure alike – it was, without a doubt, the most dangerous weapon he would ever face, never mind that the gourd was corked and there was no sand in sight.

More sweat trickled down his hairline, even though it was easily ten degrees cooler inside the adobe home. He didn't dare adjust his mask to wipe it away.

The fifth door in the hallway, the closest one on his right, was open; he could barely see the corner of a worn headboard. Licking his lips and tightening his grip on the kunai, the masked ANBU slid forward the last few steps to see into the room.

All three of the children were curled up on the bed, on their sides. Facing him. Watching him.

_Oh_, Hachi thought dumbly. The trap wasn't meant to actually stop _him_, but to wake _them_.

The realization came a little too late.

The older of the two boys lifted one hand in a negligent gesture, and the feeling of chakra tickled the ninja's senses. Something hit him from behind, violently propelling him into the room at the same instant that his feet were jerked out from under him. Hachi tucked in his shoulder and turned the unexpected tumble into a more controlled roll, losing his grip on the kunai. Behind him, the door slammed shut, rattling the window in its frame.

The air hissed as sand poured in under the gap beneath the door, a roiling current of death that moved at the will of its wielder. It was, he realized in that brief second before instinct took over, the exact same color as the thin layer of sand that had covered the tiled floor of the living area and hallway.

The thin layer of sand that had, upon inspection of memory, carried no trace of footprints from the occupants of the house.

_I'm never drawing straws again_Hachi thought dolefully.

The second passed; he rose from a crouch and let his hands fly through the seals necessary to create a weapon of wind to defend with. He forced the chakra generated into his extremities, down his arms and into his fingertips –

- and a gust of wind sent him skidding backwards, disrupting seals and wasting the chakra he had built up. He threw out his hands to catch his balance, to defend from attack, but the blow came from behind instead; Hachi hit the wall full force, hard enough to knock the breath out of him, hard enough to hear the adobe crack in protest.

The sand engulfed him immediately, curling around him like some giant hand. Faster than he could register, it pinned his arms to his sides and slithered up his body in an embrace that would surely mean death. His mask was knocked askew, and all he could see was the pale cream of ceramic.

Less than five seconds had passed since the initial attack.

Hachi, as most did in his position, proceeded to have a quiet panic attack.

"Hold off a second," one of them said; male, likely the oldest boy.

Sand scraped over his neck and collarbones. It tickled in the insanely terrifying way that he imagined being buried in a termite hill would feel like. His mouth had gone very, very dry.

He could hear the mattress squeak as weight was shifted. The quiet rustle of clothing, perhaps the scrape of metal on wood, and Hachi tried to jerk his head back when his mask shifted. But the sand tightened, holding his jaw and neck firmly in place, stopping all movement, and all he could do was try not to whimper and wait.

The tip of a kunai dragged over his cheek as the girl used the weapon to push his mask up. The oldest child of the late Kazekage looked far too calm, the elfin features set in an expression of detached interest.

"Pretty fast this time around," Kankurou said. The purple face-paint drawn around his left eye and cheek was smudged, but it still lent him a strangely creepy air.

Not nearly as creepy as the boy next to him, sitting on the side of the bed with one fisted hand resting lightly on his thigh. Those demonic, dead green eyes stared at him, unblinking, and it was all the ninja could do to tear his gaze away to the blonde girl before him.

"Sunagakure never sleeps," Temari replied idly. She pressed the flat of the blade against his right cheekbone, the point of the kunai just under his eye. "Someone besides the guards would have seen us walking through town."

"Probably," the puppeteer agreed. He took the time to push himself higher up on the bed, leaning back against the headboards. "So why would one our ANBU decide to drop in on us without knocking?"

Hachi opened his mouth to respond, and had to pause to work some moisture into his mouth when no sound emerged. The three children waiting in patient, menacing silence.

"… the Council summons you," he croaked finally.

"That certainly explains why you decided to sneak into the house," Kankurou said wryly.

"I'm sure it's standard procedure," Temari replied in just as dry a tone, pressing the kunai harder against his cheekbone.

"I h-have an official summons," Hachi said quickly. The not-quite-seen presence of the weapon (it was too close for him to focus on it properly) was making his eye water involuntarily. He didn't dare blink. "I can show it to you."

The older siblings ponder this for a moment before turning as one toward Gaara. He tilted his head back, eye still unblinking.

"Show me," he said finally, and relaxed his fist.

Sand whispered down the jounin's body, withdrawing from where it had crept up under his robes and sandals. It left behind a maddening itch that was all but impossible not to scratch.

For the briefest second, the ANBU considered going for his kunai, or for his most violent wind jutsu, or even for setting off all his explosive notes at once. He was _here_, in the same room as that _monster_; was it possible that he might succeed where all others had failed? That he might be able to rid Sungakure of this abomination for once and for all? Surely he would die in the effort, and a suicide explosion would probably take Kankurou and Temari as well, but sacrifices had to be made.

The girl withdrew the weapon she held at his cheek; he shifted his gaze down to his feet, where the sand whispered in errant circles like a predator stalking prey. Would he even be able to move before it engulfed him again? Before it pulverized him like a child would a handful of clay? The youngest boy was watching him, staring at him with those dead, empty eyes, one hand lying palm-up in his lap with the fingers curled up – as though cradling something precious… or waiting to crush something the instant it moved.

Hachi reached into his robe, moving cautiously. His fingers brushed against the rolled-up explosive notes tucked into his vest pocket.

It would only take a second.

Just a tiny, infinitesimal second…

.oO0Oo.

Baki stood to the side of the Council chamber, hands behind his back, perfectly at attention. When he arrived three hours ago he was not offered a seat at the long trestle table; he would not have taken one even if he _had_ been offered.

Harsh light from Sunagakure's sunset slanted into the room from behind the dignitary's table, casting the Council members in shadow and forcing petitioners to address the floor or risk being blinded. Baki, from his position to the side, was able to avoid the sun-blindness and watch the proceedings of the day unhindered – but his eyes chose instead to follow the sand motes as they danced through the beams of light. His irritation was tightly withheld and never touched his features.

The administrator of the underground aquifer – Sunagakure's only reliable source of water – droned on in his report of the city's water usage and retention, machinery malfunctions, lack of personnel, funding requests, etcetera. The jounin already knew all the numbers that would be quoted and all the weak spots pointed out; Ichiro had been pleading his case before the Council heads every week for a month. And every week they sent him back to the aquifer with assurances that they would look into the matter and contact him when Sunagakure's tight funding allowed. Don't call us, we'll call you.

It made Baki sick. The Kazekage would have never allowed this to happen to his city. But with his controlling influence gone there was no one left to keep the Council in check. It made him sick and more than a little angry.

The ninja let his uncovered eye shift minutely toward the members of the Council seat – those who had bothered to appear, at least. Saishu's ornate red robes were conspicuously absent, but the lack was somehow unsurprising; the desert abbot kept his ear to the ground and had his own informants among Suna's guard force. Baki wouldn't have been surprised if Saishu found out about the siblings return before Baki himself had, and knew they'd immediately be called before the Council. The old man always had been something of a coward around Gaara.

At least the other three members of the Council had bothered to arrive – politely bored at what Ichiro had to say though they were. Even young Mamoru, chieftain of the nomadic clans, showed signs of impatience to be out; his dark eyes kept flickering to the clock on the far wall. Disappointing, really, because the boy had shown a great deal of promise after Chuuko's growing senility had forced him to step down from the Council. Baki had hoped a nomad's stern sensibilities might stabilize the other men – instead it appeared as though the position of new-found power was going to Mamoru's head.

"Your concern and dedication to your job and the citizens of Sunagakure is admirable, Ichiro-san," Eki said, voice slick with false pride. His cold, reptilian eyes did not reflect the warmth in his words. "But you must understand that the issue of funding is a delicate one at the moment."

Beside him, the swarthy face of Kyouji bobbed in agreement. "It is a matter which must be given much thought."

Baki resisted the urge to spit on the floor in contempt. Suna's funding had been halved since the failed attack against the Hidden Leaf – they could survive on that little, if barely. But if even one drop of water was contaminated it could mean the death of the whole city! No matter how delicate the finances were, _everything_ had to be thrown into maintaining the water supply if necessary. How could the Council be so _blind_?

Ichiro was doubtless expecting this answer, as it hadn't deviated over the last month. He pressed his palms together and bowed.

"Your time in this matter is greatly appreciated," he said to the floor, "but you _must_ understand the urgency in the problem. If the contamination is not contained in the southwest quadrant – "

"The results will be grave. But the results of awarding the aquifer more funding without considering how it will affect the rest of Sunagakure's assets could be just as grave." Mamoru said. The beads in his braided hair clinked together as he looked across the empty seat of the Sand Priest. "Can we have results no later than sunrise tomorrow, gentlemen?"

"Surely," Eki said agreed smoothly, and Kyouji nodded again.

Baki swallowed to keep from spitting.

The dark-skinned nomad turned back to Ichiro. "We will send a messenger with the final determination tomorrow. You may depart."

Ichiro bowed deeper, thumbs touching his chest. "My gratitude, Council," he said, still addressing the floor. "You wisdom will lead Sungakure to new heights."

Baki could not help but wrinkle his nose as Ichiro backed out of the room. The Council's 'wisdom' had done nothing but fail the Hidden Sand. He appreciated Ichiro's efforts – debasing oneself in order to win the assets needed to aid the city was admirable, but in the end worthless. He already knew the aquifer would not receive the funding so badly needed.

No one on the Council had Suna's best interests in mind. The jounin had hoped the Mamoru, young and still relatively unbiased, would at least keep the people in mind, but the other three had taken him under wing far too quickly. Eki's cold lust for power and Kyouji's lust for material wealth and Saishu's indeterminate political maneuverings were having their effect on Mamoru. Perhaps he was playing it safe and was mimicking the attitudes of the other Council heads, but even something so relatively innocent was taking its toll on the lives of hundreds of people. Despite Baki's hopes, Mamoru was simply too young for this position.

And the other three… Baki had spent so much time with them over the last six months, trying to piece Suna back together, that he could no longer understand how the Kazekage must have controlled them. Kyouji would have been the easiest to keep in hand – he had grown too fat and corpulent over the years to be a threat to anyone of higher rank than a genin. Wealth and comfort was all a civilian like he needed to be content.

Eki, on the other hand, was a serious threat – one that Baki knew he could not yet fully understand. The reptilian clan head was hairless and _acted_ benign and painted his nails to match his robes – today the iridescent blue of his kimono was almost defiant of Suna's situation – but one look at his slit-pupiled eyes and his grayish-pink fingers that ended in blue-tipped _claws_, not nails… looking at that one could see that Eki was not a power to be underestimated. The Kazekage no doubt needed to use force to keep Eki under control, but who could do that now that the Kazekage was dead? Not Mamoru or Kyouji.

And then there was Saishu… and the ancient desert abbot was even more of a mystery than Eki.

Someone needed to take these four in hand. Someone who could whip Eki into compliance and match Kyouji and Saishu in matters of finance and politics. Baki had tried to serve as best he could over the last six months – to aid in the negotiations with Konoha, to bite his tongue and simper with gratitude when the Daimyo of Wind Country _graciously_ did not cut off Suna's funding as originally threatened – but he did not have the skill or knowledge to take on the Council. At least _he_ could see what needed to be done, but how could he force the Council to take action if he could not _control_ them?

One did not have to be a politician or a master of finance to see how perilously close the Hidden Sand was to collapse. The Daimyo's funding for the city had dwindled to almost nothing, many of their skilled chuunin and jounin were dead from the failed attack on Konoha, there was still no new Kazekage in sight, and now their carefully maintained water supply was steadily becoming corrupted. And yet for nearly a month now the Council had continually turned a blind eye to the contamination in the southwestern quadrant of the city. Merchants were hawking boiled water among their wares now, and the price of a neighbor's (presumably) clean tap water had exploded. Fights had broken out over the last liter of imported water on a caravan train. Dozens of people were growing ill and risking the loss of their lives from Legionnaire's Disease and diarrhea.

And the Council still did nothing. It would not take long before the contamination spread to other parts of the city. Baki could smell a riot coming – and when it arrived, it was going to engulf Sungakure in flames.

The skin on the covered side of his face itched in annoyance. Damn his inability to force sense into the situation! His negotiations with the Hidden Sound and Hidden Leaf had only added to his notorious reputation as Gaara's jounin instructor of five years – he didn't dare make a move when so many eyes were upon him.

The air of Ichiro's passing had only just grown still when the Council room door opened again.

The Council's attendant peeked his graying head in, and then bowed. "Sirs," he said, "the late Kazekage's children have arrived." There was no tremor in his voice, but the hair at his temples was curling and damp – Baki doubted this was because the fans in the waiting room had stopped working again.

Eki leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop and linking his fingers together. The expression on his hawk-like face was calm, but something in the light of his eyes signaled hunger. "Excellent. Please show them in."

The attendant bowed again and slipped out the door.

Almost as one, the eyes of the three Council heads turned to where Baki stood to the side of the chamber.

"It's been almost six months since your students were last home, Baki-sensei," the reptilian clan head purred. "I hope they've improved since the last time we saw them."

Kyouji looked bored. Mamoru looked vaguely interested (probably because he had never seen the legendary Gaara of the Sand before). Eki looked as though he was considering whether Baki's liver would taste better with wasabi or oyster sauce.

The skin hidden by the cloth bandages Baki wore around his head itched worse. He fought the urge to scratch his cheek and remained silent.

The second hand on the clock had almost made a full circuit by the time the door opened again. The attendant entered first, holding the door open as he made his announcement.

"The genin Gaara, Kankurou, and Temari of the Sand, sirs."

"Let them enter," Eki said gravely.

Baki's students filed into the room at the older man's gesture. They were dusty, and their sandals and feet still showed signs of travel, but they had taken the time to make themselves presentable. Temari had gone through the effort of brushing and putting her hair back up again (though her parts weren't as impeccably straight as Baki remembered), and Kankurou had done a rush job of reapplying his face paint (it was a little smudged on the left temple). All three wore their full compliment of weapons, and none gave him so much as a side-glance.

Despite his agitation and frustration, Baki was relieved to see his students again. He had never left Gaara in his sibling's sole care for so long before – it was good to see them whole and uninjured.

They stepped into the Council chamber in the order presented, eyes straight ahead as they lined up before the dignitary's table. Behind them followed a single ANBU in desert attire – the one sent out earlier in the day to let the siblings know their presence was required. The mask was new and did not show the chipped edges that were a sign of combat. Baki did not know whose face was behind that mask, but he knew well enough that it was one of the chuunin who'd been accelerated through the ranks in order to fill sorely needed positions. Baki had advised strongly against promotion without proper training, but it was just one of many matters in which the Council had ignored him.

The ANBU bowed deeply to the table as a whole, and the fat minister of trade and finances waved a pudgey hand in dismissal. There was no further need for him when the Kazekage's tower already had the full complement of ANBU guards. (Which, Baki thought bitterly, was very representative of the new government – they skimped on providing for anything besides their personal safety.)

With another, briefer bow, the ANBU retreated, and the attendant closed the door behind him as they left.

"And so the progeny of the Kazekage have returned," Eki said after a long, tense moment (during which the siblings showed no signs of nervousness or impatience; neither did they fidget – it made Baki want to smirk, though he did not). "How was your trip?"

"Uneventful," Gaara said quietly. He looked and sounded bored, his hands hanging loose at his sides and giving no sign of his inner thoughts. His posture, however, was very poor; had he slouched that much under the full weight of his gourd when they'd first left for Konoha?

"It is truly regretful, what happened to your father," Kyouji said. There was a note of genuine grief in his voice, but Baki suspected it was more because of what the Kazekage's death had done to Suna's coffers than because of any loss the orphans might be suffering. "We all mourn his death and the betrayal of that bastard Orochimaru."

No eyes turned toward him, but Baki could _feel_ the Councilor's attention shift subtly in his direction. He grit his teeth and remained silent instead of pointing out that he hadn't been the only one advocating an alliance with the Sound.

Kankurou's fingers twitched slightly. "… thank you," he said, when Gaara did not immediately reply.

"All of Sunagakure mourns the loss suffered," Eki said. He ran a hand over his bald, pinkish-gray skull, iridescent blue claws dragging against the skin. "Much has changed since the chuunin exam, and little of it for the better. Your sensei Baki, as I'm sure you've heard, has helped relieve some of the repercussions of our failed attack on the Leaf."

Baki declined his head slightly to accept the praise when young Mamoru's eyes flit toward him. The genin said nothing and did not look to their instructor.

The reptilian clan lord dropped his eyes to the tabletop, making a show of rustling through papers on which he had not written a single note in three hours. "We have been informed of the incident in which one of the Leaf's genin defected to the Sound. Supposedly the Hokage made some offers if you agreed to provide back-up in the genin's retrieval?"

Gaara glanced significantly toward Kankurou. The older boy nodded, reaching inside his hip pouch to withdraw a slim scroll. Even from this distance Baki could see the ornate chop of the Leaf's newest Hokage – a symbol he had grown very accustomed to over the last six months – pressed into the pale green wax seal. The kugutsu-nin stepped forward to offer it to the closest Council member – Mamoru – before stepping back and resuming his impassive stance.

The dark-skinned nomad accepted the scroll and rose from his seat, moving to stand behind the other two heads so that they could all read the scroll at once. Eki, of course, was the one to break the seal, briefly checking for any signs of traps (his chakra felt as dry and dusty as the skin of the lizards his clan controlled) before delicately sliding a thumb-claw beneath the pale wax. Silence enveloped the room, broken only by the faint tick of the wall clock and Kyouji's breathing as he labored under the heat and his layers of fat.

Baki contained his curiosity under stillness. He'd had next to no contact with his students since the chuunin exam – even willingly surrendering to the Hidden Leaf after learning of the children's capture had not guaranteed his ability to speak with them. After agreeing that they would be treated as temporary political hostages for an undecided amount of time, he had been able to exchange a few letters with them – but not in the last three months. He had, of course, learned of their condition and status through the Godaime Hokage and her aides, but her word amounted to nothing when he could not verify those words for himself. Receiving the message outlining their imminent return and that they carried new terms for Sunagakure's surrender had both lessened and worsened the tension that had been building in Baki's shoulders since his return.

He hated politics. But he was glad to have the siblings home.

"Fascinating," Mamoru murmured. He lifted his pale eyes to look directly at Kankurou, tucking a beaded braid behind his ear as he did so. "You negotiated this?"

The kugutsu-nin's fingers twitched again – a habit that he apparently hadn't broken himself of yet. Baki would have to point it out to him later.

"_We_ did, sir," Kankurou replied.

Eki's gaze briefly slid up to the hooded genin before dropping back down to the scroll again. "So modest," he said. "Still, the conditions outlined in this scroll will work greatly to our benefit. We were uncertain if Konoha would demand the withdrawal of your status as genin. Nine months suspension is a small price to pay in comparison."

The finance minister gently took the scroll from Eki's hands, stroking his fleshy throat in contemplation. "Note that this was rendered effective at the time of signing," he added, "and three of those nine months have already passed."

"And the Hokage's guarantee that the embargo will be lifted in six months with only a minimal increase in tax." Mamoru straightened to seat himself in Saishu's chair. "Even we had not been able to take negotiations that far."

The reptilian clan head shot Mamoru a _look_ (that Baki clearly interpreted as 'stop revealing information'). "Indeed," he said, and returned his gaze to the siblings. "Your negotiation skills are impressive. Clearly this genin's defection was a vital weakness to the Hidden Leaf, or the Hokage would not have been so generous with these offers. She must have been desperate for your assistance. It is important for a ninja to take advantage of every weakness that an enemy betrays, and the terms on this scroll clearly show that you have done just that. Consider this a small victory on your part."

"Thank you, sir," Kankurou and Temari said softly. Gaara said nothing.

Eki glanced over to the scroll that the portly minister of finance still held, before linking his manicured fingers on the tabletop. "The Council considers this document valid and will abide by the conditions within it," he said. (Baki did not miss that he made no effort to confer with the other Council heads before making this decision – and in Saishu's absence, no less.) "For the next six months your team will go on no missions. As the children of the Kazekage you will, of course, continue to receive a generous stipend." Orange, slit-pupiled eyes glanced in Baki's direction. "The conditions do not apply to you, so if necessary you will be put on solo missions without your team. Otherwise, it is in Sunagakure's best interest that you keep your students on a training schedule so that they will immediately be ready to resume their position once the probation period has ended."

Baki dipped his head in acquiescence. "As you say, sir."

"Does the Council have any more to ask?" the reptilian clan head asked, and looked to the two men at his side.

Kyouji shook his head minutely, and let the Hokage's scroll roll back up. "My questions are satisfied."

_No difficult feat_, Baki thought sourly_, considering you asked none to begin with_.

To Kyouji's left, sitting almost incongruously in Saishu's seat, the dark-skinned nomad smiled. "And mine as well, for the moment," Mamoru said. "Welcome home."

Eki nodded and looked at the siblings. "Your sensei will debrief you and pass any pertinent information to us through the proper channels. We will send a messenger if we need to ask any further questions. You may depart." A gentle flutter of blue-tipped fingers. "You as well, Baki-sensei. We thank you for your services."

"My pleasure and duty," the jounin replied automatically, and pushed away from the wall. He was tired of spending hour after hour in this room, day in and day out, allowed to watch the proceedings but repeatedly being slammed down every time he offered some sensible advice. He was not made for this delicate dance of formalities, but for the battlefield, where he could effect change where he saw fit. Baki would be glad to be back in the blunt, honest presence of his students.

At least Gaara would tell you to your face if he was planning on killing you.

The three siblings turned to the door when dismissed, but Temari hesitated in following her brothers. "Sirs," she said slowly, looking back to the Council members, "if it isn't too much to ask, is it possible that any decision has been reached regarding the new Kazekage?"

Kyouji's expression immediately grew shuttered, his gaze guardedly shifting toward Eki. Mamoru dropped his strange eyes to the tabletop before looking to the clan head as well.

"There are many things that must be considered in that decision," Eki said coolly. "Unfortunately, appointing a new Kazekage will not solve all of Sunagakure's problems since the failed alliance with the Sound. When enough matters have been set right, the Council will begin to consider candidates."

Baki bit his tongue to keep from saying anything of eminent stupidity. It was exactly the kind of non-response he had expected Eki to give, and exactly the kind of response that showed the Council did not want to give up its power.

He _hated_ politics.

The oldest genin dropped her gaze and nodded. "Thank you, sir," she said, and turned to leave the room. Baki followed.

"Baki-sensei," Eki called, just as the jounin was about to exit the room.

From the safety of the hallway his three students looked to him in question (or Kankurou and Temari did, at least – Gaara just stared at the floor). Baki motioned for them to continue to the waiting room before turning to step back into the Council chambers.

"Sir?" he asked.

"Be certain to keep your students in line," Eki said darkly. "Sunagakure would not be in this position if Gaara had not lost control in Konoha. Be sure he does not lose control _again_."

The skin on the covered side of his face burned, and Baki bowed to hide his glare.

"As you say, sir," he said softly, and left the room.

.oO0Oo.

Sunagakure was abandoned by day. But when the sun slid behind the protective shoulder of the mesa that surrounded the city, and when shadows swept down the streets like silent dust storms, Sunagakure came back to life.

The Council of the Hidden Wind resided in a large, dome-shaped building in the direct center of the city, sitting on the convergent points of Suna's four corners. It stood out from the businesses and apartments that surrounded it by virtue of its shape, when all other buildings shared the tall, square form of adobe skyscrapers. It was an impressive structure, no matter how many times one approached it – or left it.

Oppressive heat slammed into Temari as she followed her team in exiting the Kazekage's tower, but she was far too used to the rapid, twenty degree transition to give it more than passing thought. When one had spent several hours in an adobe hut with closed windows and no power, one hundred degrees radiating off a sidewalk and a stiff breeze coming off the desert was nothing.

Baki led, and she and her brothers followed like silent shadows. Shop windows were illuminated by fluorescent lights that spilled out onto the street, and iron lamps gradually flickered on to light the way. In the center of the city, as opposed to further out in the quadrants, the shopkeepers could afford air conditioned rooms with windows to separate their wares from the heat – and themselves, consequently, as well. Temari studied the passing reflection of her team mates and instructor in the rippled glass to keep herself from blatantly staring.

She should be glad to be home, she thought, but instead she was only finding herself increasingly apprehensive. Partially because the Kazekage was dead (who would care what kind of ninja she was if she no longer had the Kazekage's power to back her – especially when she had failed to pass the chuunin exam _and_ to decimate Konoha?), partially because of Suna's plight (they'd lost so much face in attacking Konoha and failing – and she couldn't even go on a mission to help!), but mostly because…

Gaara caught her watching his reflection; she dropped her eyes immediately, before his gaze could meet hers.

The streets were active with civilians and ninja alike, on their way to work or out for a day of shopping – crowded everywhere except for the path Baki chose down the wide walkway. The crowds parted for them as surely as a hot knife through butter, a kunai through a throat, people unconsciously stepping away to let them pass. A few even stepped into the street itself, daring the carts of goods drawn by groaning camels. Or, more dangerously, a rikisha-puller, announced only by a rhythmic jingle before people would have to jump out of the way of a sweaty cart-bearer.

It wasn't until the Kazekage's tower had been hidden by the hulking shinobi academy that Kankurou dared to grab Baki's arm and start begging for food. Baki, in turned, rolled his visible eye and turned a weary glance to the eldest of his students as if to ask, 'Can't you ever keep him in line?'

Somehow that single glance, after having gone so long without it, lifted her spirits with the familiarity of _home_. "I'm hungry, too," she said with a toothy grin she couldn't withhold.

She knew from long experience that this would earn her a sigh. And, in accordance with her expectations, Baki did. Her brother flashed her a victory sign and a cheshire grin, and she deliberately did not look back at Gaara to preserve the mood.

They stopped by a road-side stand for takoyaki (and tea for Baki and nothing for Gaara because, as expected, he was not hungry). Temari pretended not to notice when the line of patrons thinned out at their arrival, and no one said a word when the stall owner stuttered and got their order wrong twice before they could continue on their way.

"The house is a mess," Kankurou said eventually – filling his stomach evidently came before conversation with a sensei they hadn't seen in nearly half a year. (Not that Temari could blame him – she was starving, too, and Baki was evidently pleased enough to bask in their silent presence, and Gaara… well, was Gaara, albeit a more silent one than usual.)

"I haven't been home in nearly five weeks," the jounin replied unapologetically. He was walking to their left, so Temari could see the uncovered side of his face – he looked straight ahead without offering his students a glance. "The Council has temporarily designated me a cabinet member for the purpose of negotiation, and it's been keeping me… busy. Eventually I decided to stay in a vacant apartment at the ANBU barracks, because I was lucky if I went home as often as once a week. It didn't justify leaving the house open, so I sealed it up again."

The kugutsu-nin glared at the older man from over his half-eaten stick of octopus. He had stripped his gloves to keep from getting them greasy while eating, and it was odd to see how pale his hands were compared to his fingertips.

"I have a bone to pick with you about that," Kankurou muttered. "How did you – "

"Later." Baki smiled, only the right side of his mouth quirking up, and glanced over to the hooded genin. "It's a simple technique, to reuse a seal. I thought you'd have picked it up at the puppet troupe. But I suppose it's something to keep you busy until you're mission ready again. Worry about it later."

Kankurou said something under his breath that was uncomplimentary.

The oldest of the siblings smiled sweetly at her own stick of takoyaki – she couldn't resist. "Loser."

He hissed between his teeth at her, and she hissed back. Baki sighed the world-weary sigh of a man much put-upon, and they both backed off without a word.

"So, the house is a mess," their instructor prompted after a moment.

"Dirt everywhere." Kankurou took another bite and didn't bother to finish chewing before he started talking again. "And we have no power. I'll bet the generators are dead."

The blonde genin wadded up the napkin that had come with her food, tossing the trash into a waste bin as they passed it. The further they walked from the city center, the less dense the crowds became, and she no longer had to watch out for mashing her last stick of takoyaki against someone else's shirt. Street side stalls were more common, open air shops that were guarded from above by strips of pavilion cloth. Goods were laid out on display atop bright swatches of silk or in carefully over-flowing baskets, lit from above by strands of paper lanterns.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. Gaara was following along as silent as ever, pale eyes focused on what appeared to be Baki's heels.

"There was still power when I was there last," the older man mused thoughtfully. "That last dust storm probably clogged the intakes…"

"And the water purifiers probably sucked up the last of the power from the capacitors after the machines died." Kankurou made a face around his last ball of octopus. "I _so_ do not want to look at the reservoirs. That's going to be disgusting."

The jounin took a swallow of his tea from his paper cup. "That's what happens when a house sits too long in the desert. It's a good thing you three won't have any missions for a while – you'll need that time to clean up."

Temari's brow furrowed immediately, and she took the time to re-enter the conversation. "Don't you mean _we'll_ need that time to clean up, Baki-sensei?"

He smiled that damnable half-smile again, which only make the blonde scowl and start bending her last stick of takoyaki out of shape. "Perhaps I should call cleaning up the house and restoring power and water a 'training exercise.' Would that suit your ego better?"

It was, predictably, at this moment when Kankurou started bitching. Baki told them to do something, the kugutsu-nin griped about it, they did what they were told anyway (unless Gaara decided he didn't like it, in which case… yeah, it didn't get done).

As irritating (and sometimes frightening) as it was… it was predictable. Like being home.

She glanced back at her youngest sibling as Kankurou kept up his complaining, at the way he was trailing behind like some kind of aimless ghost. In the twilight of Suna's setting sun and the fluorescent light of the shops, the bruising of his eyes stood out even worse than normal against the oddly pale skin of his face.

Coming back to Suna was, almost, like coming home. Except in all the ways that were most important.

Turning slightly, she offered her last stick of takoyaki to Gaara, the skewer half-bent and the balls of octopus no better than lukewarm by now.

"Would you like these?" she asked. "I don't have room for them after all."

Temari could feel Kankurou's attention switch over to her, about ready to demand the food himself – but for a change, he refrained. Gaara drug his eyes up and stared at her silently, emotionlessly, and the blonde genin did her level best to look unconcerned. Like she didn't care if he took the food or not.

"… dude. I'll eat it if you don't." Hunger apparently threw logic out the window. Temari restrained herself from glaring at the kugutsu-nin pacing alongside their instructor.

Gaara's eyes shifted, just far enough to glance at his brother, and then back to her. Wordlessly, he took the stick of food.

She turned her gaze back to the path ahead, watching the more suburban areas steadily draw near. Ignored Kankurou when he eventually resumed his attempts to wheedle out of housework. Tried to remain unaffected when Gaara only held the food she'd given him, loosely in one hand, as though he'd forgotten it was even there.

Temari couldn't fool herself. This wasn't normal. Things would never again be normal since their defeat in Konoha.

Gaara's silence unnerved her. And, perhaps, scared her. Maybe even more than when Shukaku was staring out of his luminous green eyes.

She needed to talk with Baki.

.oO0Oo.

Jars of paint and other ceramic containers rattled on the dresser as he slid another drawer home on its tracks. He took great pains to pretend he wasn't watching Temari from the corner of his eye, but hell, who was he kidding? Of course he was watching her. She'd been off for weeks now, and now that they were finally back home – back with Baki – he knew she'd make a move. And he wanted to be there when she did.

His sister might have thought she was being sneaky, but Kankurou wasn't fooled so easily. Hadn't he been her team mate for five years now? Wasn't he a puppet master, able to discern the motives behind the blink of an eye? No matter how hard she might laugh at him if he said it out loud, it was true – her feelings were transparent to him. She was worried about Gaara.

Hell. He was worried about Gaara, too.

The kugutsu-nin could easily watch his sister as she toiled in her room, her doorway across the hall and diagonal from his own. They had already removed all the seals from the windows and doors (Baki smirking that silent half-smirk until Kankurou had finally thrown the wad of crumpled papers at him and told him to _go away_), opening them to the early night and any breeze that might happen by. And then by a kind of silent mutual consent, they each turned to their respective rooms. Kankurou, for one, wanted to sleep in a bed that did _not_ resemble a sandbox, thank you very much.

Temari pulled out another drawer from her bureau and ungracefully dumped the contents onto the floor. There was nothing that could be done with their clothing right now, anyway – without running water or electricity the best they could do was shake out the clothing and sheets (as the blonde was doing) and hope the sand wouldn't chafe too badly come the morning. Hopefully he would be up to the task of working on the generators later; the only time Kankurou would have sufficient light for the job (excluding their currently batteryless flashlights) was during those cool hours after dawn, before the metal of the generators had absorbed the sun's heat and left blisters where he touched it. Or, alternatively, during a full moon – but it was not currently a full moon, and his hands would have been too full with damage control to even think about machine maintenance if it were.

Damage control. Heh. Kankurou was beginning to wonder if they would ever have to deal with that again. He wasn't sure if the idea scared him or if he was just deluding himself or if the knot in his stomach was a precursor for relief.

Temari shook out another shirt, folded it neatly, and laid it on her (previously shaken out) bed. She caught him watching her – damnit, forgot about being discrete! – bent over to grab another shirt from where she'd dumped them on the floor, and shook the sand out of it in his direction. Loudly. While glaring.

Kankurou took the hint and retreated further into his room.

Geez, he already knew she was tense and on edge because Gaara was being so _weird_ – more so than usual, anyway. She didn't have to be a bitch about it. There really wasn't anything they could do until their younger brother snapped out of this _mood_ and went back to what consisted as 'normal' – all they could do was watch and prepare. It certainly wasn't as if Gaara would _tell_ them why he had retreated so far inside himself that he hardly noticed what was going on around him. He certainly wasn't considerate enough to clue them in.

The little punk just _had_ to make things difficult for them.

He stared out the small window to his room, to the shed out back that contained their spare mechanical parts and all his extra puppeteering tools, and to the walls of the great mesa beyond. The light from the houses that surrounded them did not extend far enough for him to tell which pair of thick, silvery cables came from their generators – set high on the mesa wall – or from their neighbors'.

They would need to start a list of all the things they'd need to get come morning. Water, perishables, any pieces they might need for the generators, flashlight batteries so he would do repairs overnight if necessary… jeez, Baki had been right. They certainly had their work cut out for them.

Behind him, through the door and across the hall, Kankurou heard his sister shove the dresser drawer back on its tracks. Heard her stuff her clothing back in and slam the drawer closed. Heard a conspicuously long silence as she did not move on to the next drawer – and he knew she had one more to go through. He'd been watching.

The kugutsu-nin made it a point to not turn around and see what his sister was doing. Almost a full five minutes passed before he heard the hushed, "… Baki?"

Ahh, there we go. He knew she would make her move on their sensei before the night was up. She was too impatient to wait until they were out of ear shot from the topic of discussion.

Said topic of discussion had moved back to the kitchen nearly half an hour ago, resuming whatever he had been doing the morning before. Kankurou could hear his movements, if barely, which meant Gaara would be able to hear them, too.

He supposed he should get back to cleaning. You know, rattle some furniture, curse at the general state of his belongings, lend some cover noise so his brother wouldn't get suspicious of a whispered conversation. Gaara was paranoid enough as it was (when he wasn't spacing out at least), and Kankurou _really_ didn't want the younger genin's suspicions turned in _their_ direction. Gaara didn't trust them, but he didn't _dis_trust them, either, and that was a compromise Kankurou didn't want to upset.

But if he did provide cover noise for Baki and Temari's conversation, he wouldn't be able to hear it, either. And Temari would be just the kind of bitch to ignore him or withhold information if he asked what Baki said. And Baki, of course, would just say, 'Go ask your sister.'

… damnit all. They'd just have to pull off a super-sneaky, innocently-quiet, no-we're-not-plotting-behind-you-back conversation and hope Gaara wouldn't get curious. Kankurou turned away from his darkened window and crossed the hall to Baki's bedroom.

Temari was standing just inside the door to their mentor's room, and glanced back to him as he came up behind her. Her dark green eyes were distracted and more than a little irritated at his presence. Kankurou just stuck his tongue out at her and stuffed his hands in his pockets. If she wanted a private conversation, then she could wait until later. Gaara was his brother, too.

Their instructor was seated by the closet door, his jounin vest neatly hung on a peg by the door, his stored array of weaponry (and the chest he kept them in) laid out on a cloth before him. His single dark eye did not look particularly surprised when Kankurou joined his sister, and the exposed portion of his face took on that serious, stone-faced expression he got during missions.

"Difficulties?" he asked quietly, and motioned them into the room with the tip of the kunai he was cleaning.

"No," Temari replied, moving into the room and seating herself on the edge of their instructor's bed. Kankurou only stared at her, not following, and wondered what the hell she meant. Gaara had been nothing _but_ a problem for the last six months; if he hadn't been a problem, why would they be in here talking about it? What the hell did she mean, _no_?

Baki looked as surprised as Kankurou felt – or at least, looked as surprised as he ever got, which was to say that his uncovered brow twitched upwards a degree in curiosity. "None at all?" he asked. "Not even at night?"

She shook her head, her loose and dusty ponytails swaying with the movement. "It's like he's not even there half the time. I mean, when he pays attention he pays _attention_, but unless you've pulled him into a conversation he kind of… zones."

Oh. That sort of not-problem. Yeah. It was almost funny to think of a passive Gaara as a problem, because you'd think, hey, homicidal maniac that squishes people into bloody balls of goo because they looked at him funny would be _way_ more of a problem than a passive boy that said nothing and pretty much did whatever you asked of him. But said passive boy wasn't _Gaara_, was some imposter that did not fit in their weird menagerie, and frankly it creeped the hell out of Kankurou because he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop – for Gaara to finally snap the rest of the way and kill everyone, including his team mates. It was kind of scary.

He'd rather deal with the homicidal Gaara any day of the week.

"Even back in Konoha," he offered, adding his own piece to the conversation. He did not mean to deliberately lower his voice, but he could still hear their youngest brother moving around in the kitchen, and he didn't want the kid to hear them talking. "We watched him when the moon was full, but there were no signs of…"

Baki examined them both for a moment before looking back to the kunai in his hands, resuming his cleaning. "I see," he said simply, not asking for clarification of just what signs they did not see – not _needing_ clarification. His dark eyes assumed the far away look of deep thought.

Kind of how Gaara always looked now, the kugutsu-nin thought. Far away, not really in the same place as the people surrounding him. In a place of such deep contemplation that he couldn't be bothered with such trivial things like 'awareness of your surroundings.'

Temari picked at the dusty coverlet on Baki's bed, and all three of them were silent as their sensei resumed the steady rhythm of cleaning his weapons. Down the hall, in the kitchen, dishes quietly clattered as Gaara puttered around with whatever cleaning he was intent on. If only he paid as much attention to everything happening around him recently, Kankurou thought. Then they could be less worried about him walking into a wall by accident because he was too deep in thought to notice.

"And Shukaku?" the jounin asked finally.

The oldest of the siblings glanced at her brother, then towards the entrance of the door. Kankurou couldn't help leaning back to peek down the hall himself, and was satisfied that no one was tramping down the hall with bloody vengeance in mind. They had deliberately avoided saying Gaara's name, using 'he' and 'him' in the assumption that the association would automatically be known – as though they were afraid of attracting his attention. Speak of the devil, as it was said. Silly, but still…

"He might have slept this afternoon," Temari said quietly. "But otherwise… he hasn't slept in about a week."

"Or longer," Kankurou added. Normally Gaara napped every three days or so, but since they left Konoha it was almost as though he was refusing to sleep at all. "He's pushing the envelope harder than he usually does."

"I see," Baki repeated. It was impossible to determine his thoughts with the way his face was half-covered with that shawl. "There's not much we can do beyond watch, you realize that?"

_Watch_. It wasn't like there was anything else they really did, since it wasn't like they could exactly control Gaara if he decided to go on a rampage. The expression on Temari's face echoed her sibling's thoughts as she nodded.

"I know," she said, sounding like she had a bad taste in her mouth. "But with the way he's been – for months now – I'm afraid he might…"

Baki finally glanced back up from his weapons.

"… slip up," Kankurou finished for her.

The jounin watched them for a second, face devoid of expression and utterly serious - determining their level of concern, determining just how serious the situation was. Kankurou hated it when Baki measured them up like this; he wondered if this was how his enemies felt when the jounin was deciding whether or not to kill them. But he knew it was necessary. Baki's level of assistance always depended on just how serious his pupils were on the matter.

And as far as Kankurou was concerned, his sister and he were _very_ serious.

"There's not much we can do besides watch," their instructor repeated. He dropped his eyes and resumed the inspection of his weapons. "We'll decide what to do if – and when – any problems come up."

It was something, Kankurou figured, and better than nothing at all, even if it wasn't an immediate solution to the problem. And it would have been stupid to figure that Baki _could_ come up with an immediate solution to what had been a problem for twelve years now. It would just have to be enough that he knew there _was_ a problem (or at least, a new problem) and that he would help them deal with it.

He looked over to his sister, where she was sitting on Baki's bed. _Is that good enough?_ he asked with his eyes, with the frown on his lips.

Temari frowned back, stood, and left the room, brushing past him with just the barest millimeter of space between them.

_Not good enough by half_, she was saying. _But there's nothing else we can do._


End file.
